Gush Shalom: Wont Know Peace Until Neighbours Do

[] "We won't know peace, as long as our
neighbors do not" [] The refusal epidemic continues to
spread: For the first time, a regular service officer
refuses service in OT

"We won't know peace, as long as
our neighbors do not"

[In the following Uri Avnery takes
position against those who regard strife among Palestinians
as something to be happy about, and clarifies why
disintegration of the PA structure and the leadership of
Arafat won't bring peace any closer.]

Hebrew at request
& soon at the site òáøéú òì ôé á÷ùä àå á÷øåá áàúø

I
am writing this with an aching heart. I have postponed
writing it as long as I could. In Jewish tradition,
there is a searing phrase: "The Temple was not destroyed
but for gratuitous hatred." It sums up the events in
beleaguered Jerusalem, in the year 70 AD, when the town was
surrounded by the Roman legions. While Titus' soldiers were
maintaining the siege and the population was beginning to
starve, inside the town ferocious battles took place
between various factions of zealots, who killed each other
and burnt each other's last stores of wheat.

Something like this is now taking place in the Palestinian
territories. While the occupation forces are tightening the
siege and carrying out "targeted killings", battles between
the Palestinians themselves have broken out, with militants
shooting at each other, targeting leaders and burning
headquarters. Occupation generals, politicians and
commentators in Israel follow the events with glee or click
their tongues sanctimoniously: "Didn't we tell you? The
Palestinians can't rule themselves, there is no one to talk
with, we have no partner for peace. When they are left to
themselves, anarchy reigns." On many Israeli tongues the
Greek word "chaos" (pronounced with an American accent) was
rolling.

Since the Sharon government is responsible
for the present situation in Gaza in the first place, it
resembles the son who kills both his parents and pleads in
court: "Have mercy! I am an orphan!" Paradoxically, the
Palestinian factions, of all people, seem to believe
Sharon's announcement about his intention to leave Gaza.
What is happening there is, first of all, a fight about the
skin of the bear that has not yet been caught.

Everybody talks about "reforms", a word dear to the
Americans, but the battle is about power and control.
Muhammad Dahlan's faction hopes to take possession of the
Gaza Strip before Sharon's promised withdrawal. Sharon's
people are open about their preference for this group. The
Americans support them in order to suit Sharon, and the
Egyptians support them to please the Americans.
The rival faction supports Mussa Arafat who was sent by his
relative, Yasser Arafat, to control the security apparatus.
He may not be the most popular appointee, but the leader in
far-away Ramallah appointed his most trusted lieutenant in
order to fend off the danger he fears most: that the Gaza
Strip will cut itself off from the West Bank and become a
kind of autonomous Bantustan under Israeli-American-Egyptian
tutelage.

This is what is happening on the surface.
But the events also have deeper roots in the present
Palestinian situation, which consists of an existential
contradiction. On the one side, the Palestinian war of
liberation is far from over. It is at its height. It can
well be said that never has the very existence of the
Palestinians - both as a nation and as individuals - been
in greater danger than now.

On the other hand, on the
West Bank and in the Gaza Strip there has come into being a
kind of mini-state that requires a state-like
administration: security, economy, education, justice,
welfare and so on.

The surreal situation in Gaza
reflects this contradiction: while Mussa Arafat, Muhammad
Dahlan and the other Fatah leaders fight each other for
control of the Palestinian Authority and its security
organs, a brutal war is going on between the occupation
forces and the Tanzim, Hamas and Jihad militants.

The leader of the Palestinian war of liberation is Yasser
Arafat. Among the Palestinians, no one contests that. He is
the only person able to safeguard the unity of the
Palestinian people. He is the only leader with a wide
strategic grasp of all the geographic and functional aspects
of the dispersed Palestinian people. He has the attributes
necessary for a leader in such a situation: an uncontested
personal authority, physical courage, the ability to make
decisions and a talent for manoeuver. Palestinians call him
the 'Father of the Nation" and compare him with George
Washington, David Ben-Gurion and Nelson Mandela.

The
criticism of Arafat, prevalent mostly among the intellectual
and political elite - concerns his functioning as the chief
of the "mini- state". Unlike the Prime Minister of Israel,
Arafat is not suspected of personal corruption. He is being
blamed for the fact that the Palestinian Authority is too
much like the other Arab regimes, suffering from
concentration of power, proliferation of security
apparatuses, corruption, cronyism and the undue influence
of big families.

As a Palestinian member of
parliament told me recently: "Arafat leads the national
struggle, and all of us support him. But he neglects the
domestic order, and against that we protest."

However, Sharon is not fighting against Arafat to encourage
him to delegate power or because he has seven different
security formations (the United States has 15 intelligence
agencies, four military services and an untold number of
police organizations.) He is fighting against Arafat
because his elimination will cause the disintegration of the
Palestinian nation into splinters and thus clear the way
for ethnic cleansing. Arafat is very much aware of this
danger and, in comparison, all the diseases of the
Palestinian Authority seem to him secondary.

The
strategy of Sharon and his generals is simple and brutal: to
destroy the Palestinian Authority, turn life in the occupied
territories into hell, disintegrate Palestinian society and
drive the survivors from the country, not in one dramatic
sweep (as in 1948) but in a slow, continuous, creeping
process. Up to now, this has not succeeded. In spite of
inhuman conditions, the Palestinian society has held on in
a manner that arouses wonderment. The events of the last
few weeks look to Sharon and the army chiefs like signs of
collapse. I believe they are wrong and that the Palestinian
society will draw back from the abyss.

It is
reasonable to expect that the prisoner in the Mukata'ah, who
has already led his people out from so many existential
crises, will do so again. I sincerely hope so, because
Arafat is the only person who can make peace with us. We
will know no peace, as long as our neighbors do not.

[]
The refusal epidemic continues to spread: For the first
time, a regular service officer refuses service in the
Territories

Translated from an article by Osnat Shustak,
Ma'ariv 21/7/2004 - not found in the web version.

Second
Lieutenant T. a 28-year battalion doctor and regular
officer, refused to join his armoured battalion in an
incursion into the Gaza Strip - for reasons of conscience.
Several weeks ago, battalion 82 of the Seventh Regiment was
sent on operation at the town of Beit Hanoun in the
northern Gaza Strip, aimed at preventing the launch of
Quasam rockets at the [Israeli town of] Sderot. T. had
previously served in the Territories, and even took part
this May in "Operation Rainbow" [including the demolition
of houses and the shooting of tank shells at unarmed
demonstrators] at the town of Rafah - though already then
he expressed reservations about the army's activities in
the Gaza Strip. This time he refused to take part in the
operation, stating that taking part in the army's actions
in the Territories would contradict the hippocratic oath he
swore as a doctor, as well as standing in contrast to the
army's own declared values and being detrimental to the
state security. Many efforts were made to convince him to
recant, but T. stuck to his refusal. Of no avail were the
exhortations of his commanding officers, who stated that his
job would be to take care of Palestinians as well as fellow
soldiers, and that by refusing to join the operation he is
putting soldiers' lives in danger. Finding him insistent,
T.'s direct commander passed him on to the Seventh Regiment
commander, who sentenced T. to 35 days' imprisonment for
refusing an order during a military operation. He also told
T.: "You are not worthy to be an officer". It seems that
upon being released from his prison term T. will be
discharged from service - though the army had paid for his
medical studies in the expectation of getting years of
service in return.

"I regard this very gravely" said
Defence Minister Mofaz on Army Radio."There are two highly
detrimental aspects to this officer's actions. First, he
refused to take part in an action very vit al to the
security of Israel's citizens, in order to prevent the
shooting of rockets at Sderot and its environs. Also, this
officer who is a doctor was unwilling to help soldiers who
might be hurt, which is trampling upon the hippocratic
oath. I think that the way his commanders dealt with this
case is the way to deal with refusers."

On the other hand,
David Zonshein of the "Courage to Refuse" movement praised
the doctor's action: "It is not 'an extremist act', it is
a very Zionist act. It is important for the public to know
that there are officers who want to serve and love their
country, but are opposed to the enormous damage which
service in the country is doing to the country. This is the
first time that a regular service officer is refusing
service in the Territories. I hope and believe that his act
h as broken a fissure in the consensus and that more
officers will now be willing to act for what they believe
in - even if they have to pay a personal price".

[N.B.
Ma'ariv did not mention to its readers that the Beit Hanoun
operation in which Dr. T. refused to take part was about a
still ongoing campaign of destruction of Palestinian fields,
hothouses and orange groves, demolition of houses and the
imposition of a weeks-long siege on Beit Hanoun's 20,000
inhabitants. ]

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